“Either me or you,” I said. “Maybe both.”
“That don’t sound very Christian.” Tempest tried to get lightness into his voice but failed.
“Angels were never Christians,” I said. “We scoured the skies before the Hebrews or the Coptics or the great scaled lizards of the aborigines. We are brutal, bloodletting creatures who answer to a primal force.”
“You sure you Joshua, man?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Because I never heard ole Angel talk like you talkin’ now.”
“I was made to forget a great part of my past lives,” I said, feeling as if I really were another being. “The angels have been around long before man was man, when he was merely a notion in the material of life. And we were different and brutal—of the instinct. As you developed so did we and we were estranged from each other.”
“And how come you remember all that now?” Tempest asked, looking around, for an escape route I thought.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the resurrection of my spirit in this new form. Maybe Gabriel is giving me the memory to enable me to execute his plans.”
“Execute, huh?”
“Are you afraid of me, Tempest?”
To my surprise a smile of delight came across the Errant Soul’s face. He grinned at me and shook his head.
“You been a black man for more’n three years, Angel, and you still don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“When you down to the quick you don’t have time to be scared of the gun. It’s the bullet gonna get you, man. It’s death that you scared’a, not the man wanna kill you. Ev’rybody wants you dead. Everybody wants you hangin’ from a tree or telephone pole, from some bridge or just the side of a house. But just cause there a hangin’ tree that don’t mean I got to be afraid’a pinecones.”
“I don’t understand. I have been sent to kill you.”
“Why?”
“For some reason beyond my comprehension.”
“So you don’t know why but you might do it anyway?”
“I…”
“Listen, Angel, most people don’t know why they do what they do. Most of ’em don’t even wanna be doin’ it anyway. Fat man don’t wanna eat fast-food burgers but he cain’t he’p himself. Pretty young thing don’t wanna go out with a rich ole toad but she think she got to. I met this rich kid workin’ for Bernini who was gonna go to medical school but he didn’t want to.”
“Why would he go, then?”
“Because his parents said that’s what they wanted. Here that boy had more fun wit’ us than he ever did with his own kind but he just couldn’t break the chain.”
“What are telling me, Tempest?”
“Just because you got a gun in your pocket don’t mean you have to shoot it. I know everything seem to say that you have to pull out your pistol and squeeze off two shots but why now? Why you got to kill me or you right now? Maybe you could do it tomorrow or next week, maybe next year or never.”
“Don’t you understand, I’ve lost everything.”
“Is Brownie or Tempo or Tethamalanianti dead?”
“You…you said my daughter’s name,” I said, truly surprised.
“Of course I did. She’s the daughter of my friends. I have to know how to say her name.”
Somehow this simple declaration broke the spell of my displacement. The fact that Tempest could speak a name that had not been uttered in a thousand years underscored his friendship. This revelation humbled and made me more human than ever.
“But what can I do?” I asked my human friend.
“You see, Angel,” he replied, sitting back easily. “That’s all it takes.”
“What?”
“Life,” he said. “Life is a buzz-saw boxer and we the reckless counter-puncher lookin’ to get in something before this wild man takes us out. He keeps on comin’, throwin’ everything he got at us and we try an’ keep our wits about us even though we know it’s a long shot for us to win.”
“I don’t understand, Tempest.”
“There’s no understandin’, Angel. There’s only the fight. Either you keep on fightin’ or you give up. That’s it.”
The words were convincing, if incomprehensible. I knew that I had to fight without understanding who or what the enemy might be. The long journey of my existence, it seemed, was like a preparation for this coffee break at the end of Tempest’s shift.
I wrapped the small pistol in a handkerchief I carried and handed the bundle to Tempest.
“Hold on to it for me?” I asked.
He sighed as he took it and I realized that for a brief moment I was the buzz-saw boxer and Tempest had, at the last moment, broken through my attack.
ALSO BY
WALTER MOSLEY
* * *
DEBBIE DOESN’T DO IT ANYMORE
Millions of men (and no doubt many women) have watched famed black porn queen Debbie Dare—she of the blond wig and blue contacts—“do it” on television and computer screens every which way with every combination of partners the mind of man can imagine. But one day an unexpected and thunderous on-set orgasm catches Debbie unawares, and when she returns to the mansion she shares with her husband, insatiable former porn star and “film producer” Theon Pinkney, she discovers that he’s died in a case of hot tub electrocution, “auditioning” an aspiring “starlet.” Burdened with massive debts that her husband incurred, which various L.A. heavies want to collect on, Debbie must reckon with a life spent in the peculiar subculture of the pornography industry and her estrangement from her family and the child she had to give up. Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore is a portrait of a ransacked but resilient soul in search of salvation and a cure for grief.
Fiction
LITTLE GREEN
In Little Green, Walter Mosley’s acclaimed detective Easy Rawlins returns from the brink of death to investigate the dark side of that haven for Los Angeles hippies, the Sunset Strip. He’s soon back in top form, cruising the gloriously psychedelic mean streets of L.A. with his murderous sidekick, Mouse. They’ve been hired to look for a young black man, Evander “Little Green” Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator’s Blood, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem.
Crime Fiction
PARISHIONER
An eBook Original
Parishioner is a portrait of a hardened criminal who regrets his past, but whose only hope for redemption is to sin again. In a small California town, a simple church of white stone sits atop a hill on the coast. This nameless house of worship is a sanctuary for the worst kinds of sinners: the congregation and even the clergy have broken all ten Commandments and more. Now they have gathered to seek forgiveness. Xavier Rule—Ecks to his friends—didn’t come to California in search of salvation but, thanks to the grace of this church, he has begun to learn to forgive himself and others for past misdeeds. One day a woman arrives to seek absolution for the guilt she has carried for years over her role in a scheme to kidnap three children and sell them on the black market. As part of atoning for his past life, Ecks is assigned to find out what happened to the abducted children. As he follows the thin trail of the twenty-three-year-old crime, he must struggle against his old, lethal instincts—and learn when to give in to them.
Crime Fiction
ODYSSEY
An eBook Original
Sovereign James wakes up one morning to discover that he’s gone blind. Sovereign’s doctors can’t find anything wrong with him, nor does he remember any physical or psychological trauma. Unless his sight returns, Sovereign has reached the end of his twenty-five-year career in human resources. A couple of weeks later he is violently mugged on the street. His sight briefly, miraculously returns during the attack: for a few seconds, he can see as well as hear a young female bystander’s cries of distress. Now he must grapple with two questions: What caused him to lose his vision—and, perhaps more troubling, why does
violence restore it? As Sovereign searches for the woman he glimpsed, he will come to question everything he valued about his former life.
Fiction
VINTAGE BOOKS
Available wherever books and eBooks are sold.
www.vintagebooks.com
The Further Tales of Tempest Landry Page 13